View the debate, the first televised presidential debate in U.S. history.

President John F. Kennedy

JFK – Election and Assassination:

· Democrat John F. Kennedy defeated the Republican Richard Nixon in the presidential election of 1960.

President-elect John F. Kennedy, left, shakes hands with Vice President Richard M. Nixon after a post-election conference in Miami, Nov. 14, 1960.

· In 1963, Pres. Kennedy was assassinated by Lee Harvey Oswald in Dallas, Texas.

Video: CBS News Special Report, 40 Years Later

(5:04)

Jack Ruby, shot Lee Harvey Oswald on November 24th, 1963, as the Dallas Police was transferring Oswald to the county jail.

Video of Oswald’s Murder

President Lyndon Johnson· Vice-president Lyndon Johnson was named President upon the assassination of John F. Kennedy in 1963.

Lyndon B. Johnson takes the oath of office aboard Air Force One in Dallas, Texas, November 22, 1963.

Objective: To examine the importance of the Supreme Court case of Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, KS.

Major Victory

· African Americans continued their struggle for equality, which became known as the civil rights movement.

· In 1896, the Supreme Court ruled in Plessy v. Ferguson that “separate but equal” facilities for blacks and whites were constitutional.

Challenging the law:

A Sign at the Greyhound Bus Station, Rome, GeorgiaSeptember 1943. (Esther Bubley, photographer)

"The Rex theater for Negro People." Leland, Mississippi, November 1939.Marion Post Wolcott, photographer.

"A cafe near the tobacco market." Durham, North Carolina. May 1940.

" People waiting for a bus at the Greyhound bus terminal." Memphis, Tennessee. September 1943.

Esther Bubley, photographer.

· With help from the NAACP, the case of Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka reached the Supreme Court, challenging the constitutionality of Plessy v. Ferguson.

· In the case, Oliver Brown challenged that his daughter, Linda, should be allowed to attend an all-white school near her home instead of the distant all-black school she had been assigned to.

Oliver Brown was a welder for the Santa Fe Railroad and a part-time assistant pastor at St. John African Methodist Episcopal Church.

Linda Brown was in the third grade when her father began his class action lawsuit.

· Brown’s lawyer, Thurgood Marshall, argued that “separate” could never be “equal” and that segregated schools violated the Fourteenth Amendment’s guarantee to provide “equal protection” to all citizens.

Standing outside a Topeka classroom in 1953 are the students represented in Oliver Brown et al. v. Board of Education of Topeka, From left: Vicki Henderson, Donald Henderson, Linda Brown (Oliver's daughter), James Emanuel, Nancy Todd, and Katherine Carper.

* In 1954, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of the Brown family, and schools nationwide were ordered to be desegregated.

George E.C. Hayes, Thurgood Marshall, and James M. Nabrit, following Supreme Court decision ending segregation.

Linda Brown and her new class mates after Court decision.

Thurgood Marshall(1908-1993) Associate Justice, U.S. Supreme Court.

Integrated schools:

· In Little Rock, Arkansas, Gov. Orval Faubus opposed integration.

· Gov. Faubus was violating federal law.

· In 1957, he called out the National Guard in order to prevent African Americans from attending an all-white high school.

Bottom Row, Left to Right: Thelma Mothershed, Minnijean Brown, Elizabeth Eckford, Gloria Ray; Top Row, Left to Right: Jefferson Thomas, Melba Pattillo, Terrence Roberts, Carlotta Walls, Daisy Bates(NAACP President), Ernest Green

· Therefore, Pres. Eisenhower sent troops to Little Rock where, under their protection, the African American students were able to enter Central High School.

African American students arriving at Central High School, Little Rock, Arkansas, in U.S. Army car, 1957.

Members of the 101st US-Airborne Division escorting the Little Rock Nine to school